Cultivating Innovation: Science & Technology Education at Seven Arrows

While rigorous science and technology have always been fundamental aspects of the Seven Arrows way of education, the school has taken student learning in these core subjects even further in recent years. This K-6 school has its students partake in three to five days of “STEAM” each week (with older students receiving more minutes of instruction), and this does not include the technology that is integrated elsewhere in the curriculum.

STEAM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Art, and Math) at Seven Arrows is the authentic, hands-on integration of science across virtually all content areas in a way that makes learning inventive, relevant and engaging. This fall, students will be partaking in even more “maker” projects. The Makerspace movement allows students to design and create physical devices that serve a functional purpose.

Students will design contraptions that solve problems or explain phenomena observed in their environments – for instance, a gadget that helps catch water from a leaky faucet, using squishy circuits that can conduct electricity or collaboratively “making” a device that shows Newton’s law of gravity. Maker projects will particularly be used in the areas of electronics and physics, using Arduino and 3D modeling to name just two.

“Making” comprises inventing, tinkering, then iterating. The iterative step (testing, redesign and reflection) is the heart of making. Through this critical, reflective exercise, students learn what works and what doesn’t, and they have the freedom to take their projects where they envision they should go. Children’s capacity to create and design is truly remarkable, and these skills along with the can-do confidence that comes with a job well done is what making is all about.

Technology is another main component of the Seven Arrows curriculum. After a hugely successful 1:1 technology integration rollout a year ago with every student K-6 equipped with an iPad and every 4-6th grader also with a laptop, Seven Arrows is looking to continue to deepen its use of technology following Dr. Puentadura’s SAMR model.

Before the full technology integration launch, educators at Seven Arrows knew that technology would never be a stand-alone subject; technology needed to function as a support to all learning. Puentadura’s model is a continuum similar to Bloom’s Taxonomy that allows teachers and parents to understand the various levels of technology use beginning at its most primitive to the type of use that allows for critical, higher order thinking and problem solving.

Puentadura model shows technology in its youngest phase as beginning with Substitution where it simply replaces the current technology (such as the use of a word processor as a substitute to paper-and-pencil note-taking), then has the potential to move through the continuum to Augmentation, Modification and finally to Redefinition. If one has this model in mind, the learning objective and task can actually become redefined by the technology.

Seven Arrows is so excited about the school year and to cultivate scientific minds that venture into the world confident to see themselves as inventive problem solvers and visionaries.